He thinks he got away with it: Look at that smug smile. But Iain… Smith has committed contempt of Parliament. He admitted his guilt by failing to explain his actions to a Parliamentary committee and now he must be expelled from Westminster. Nothing less will suffice.

We were all so thrilled at the time. After being outed as a liar by some of our favourite blogs, and after more than 100,000 people signed a petition calling for him to be held to account, we heard that Iain Duncan Smith was to be called before Parliament’s Work and Pensions committee to account for the statistical falsehoods he has been spreading around Westminster and the UK like a new disease.

The session, covering recent UK Statistics Authority investigations into complaints about benefit statistics and the DWP’s response, the quality and accessibility of the department’s statistics, its processes for preparing and releasing statistics, and its role in helping the media interpret those statistics, will instead question two civil servants.

They are David Frazer, head of information, governance and security directorate at the DWP; and John Shields, director of communications at the DWP. And they are completely uninteresting.

I can tell you what they’ll say right now. They’ll say they produced the statistics in good faith, all with warnings on them, telling ministers like the Secretary-in-a-State that they should not be misrepresented in certain ways (especially the ways he has misrepresented them).

For example: Smith’s claim that “Already we’ve seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the [benefits] cap move into jobs. This clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact.”

We know there is no evidence to support this claim. We also know that the DWP officials who provided the figures issued an explicit caution, that they were “not intended to show the additional numbers entering work as a direct result of the contact”.

It is therefore pointless to interrogate the officials over the wrongdoing of the Secretary of State, or any other Conservative or Coalition MP who has bent the facts before the public.

The no-show by the DWP’s head honcho will be a huge let-down, especially for the 100,332 people who signed disability activists Jayne Linney and Debbie Sayers’ petition for the Work and Pensions Committee to hold Iain Duncan Smith to account for his lies.

After the committee announced that it would question him in June, they wrote: “We are really proud that we started this petition. It’s often feels like politicians get away with saying whatever they like. By starting this petition we’ve shown that everyone has the tools to call politicians out if they try to make things up. They can’t get away with spinning statistics any longer.”

It is now apparent that politicians think they can get away with it if they don’t bother to turn up and explain themselves.

So let’s just put it to the Work and Pensions committee that it should forget about the meeting, which is now due to take place on July 10.

Let’s all accept Iain Duncan Smith’s refusal to attend as what it is – an act of cowardice and an admission of guilt.

If he won’t defend himself, then he must stand guilty of the offence.

This brings us to the question of the penalty he should pay.

I refer you to my article earlier this year, in which I quoted Parliamentary convention: “Apparently there is an offence, here in the UK, known as Contempt of Parliament. An MP is guilty of this if he or she deliberately misleads Parliament, and any MP accused of the offence may be suspended or expelled.

“It’s time for Iain Duncan Smith to put up or shut up. He must either admit that he lied to Parliament and to the people in order to justify his despicable treatment of the most vulnerable people in the country…

“… or he must be expelled from Parliament like the disgrace that he is.”

He has made it clear that he will admit nothing. He won’t even bother to explain himself.

Why does it always have to be “Working Class” people Linda? My dad was a garage Mechanic but I ended up running 12 companies before I semi retired through losing £7M because of Barclays Bank Criminal fraud! (True and court case exists to prove it). I have friends who are from all works of life, best friends from Aristocracy to my oldest friend who is a Bakers delivery man… So you are going to creat a government of Good Ole workin class lads an lasses fromth North maybe (where I am from too) and create this very in democratic system of running the country? For Gods sake let go of the Class shite and grow up! Stop the CONLABLIB trio, they are all the same. Follow a new way of living, http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

I’ll work out a decently-worded e-petition to have LieDS ejected from Parliament and put it up tomorrow. I’ll announce it here.
I’d like to beg for everyone reading this to publicise it as widely as you can. Let’s really make a statement about this. We MUST NOT allow politicians to go against the will of the people in this way.

I can’t see anything happening, I have virtually lost the will to go on, afterall what is there left? The coalition have ruined everything worth looking forward to, the law always seems to be on their side, and if not they can manipulate it anyway they like!!!
there isn’t even a livable wage anymore, especially for unskilled people!!! Sorry to be a downer but I suffer with severe anxiety and PTSD, I have one friend in this world and no family I never have had any family so all I’m seeing is no justice for all the people who need it most!!!!

You can’t not go on Joanne, Other people of your ilk need you and are depending on you to help them fight. The First World War lasted over four years; the Second World War lasted five years, we have been fighting ever since. Only now Wars are fought for profit, life is expendable for profit. The point being we are a nation of fighters, the ruling classes would have you believe they won the 1st and 2nd world wars, they didn’t, we did while they hid away in their bunkers. So fight, question, reveal and broadcast your findings to anyone that will listen, in the supermarket, on the street, anywhere. I’m like you, I’m too old for my age, disabled, lost a lot of my friends from when I was able bodied, I worked for almost 35 years and made a lot of friends, most of who are still working. Some are dead. I have very little family left, no one to help or turn to. If I’m lucky I get out once a fortnight to the supermarket, (there are no decent local shops). I can’t remember the last time I had a night out. Yes I can thinking about it, 2004 just before I became almost immobile and had to start taking Morphine. I have a poster on my bedroom wall, it was the 25th May and I went to the Academy 3 in Manchester to watch the Magic Band. I’ve been fighting before and ever since chronic pain, arthritis, a duff heart, Christ a list too long to print here, but I’ve never stopped fighting, a good skrike ( cry) as we used to say every now and then does you good. What we need in this country is a military coup to overthrow the Government, Mass Civil Disobedience, and the perpetrators and conspirators of this mess we’re all in arrested, imprisoned, and punished. So never give up the fight for your own good and peace of mind.

Joanna, keep fighting. I’m in similar position (with similar ailments) and I know how reading about these injustices day after day can grind you down. But people power is all we have, and EVENTUALLY the people will succeed. Sadly it may take a long time, but that is no reason to stop trying right now. 🙂 Hugs to you, we have to support each other!

Here’s a thought. Someone good at doing the epetitions thing should try petitioning the courts the make the MPs liable for bedroom tax. The rent properties and get the rent off the tax payer, technically housing benefit and they should not be able to claim it back under “expenses”

Reblogged this on Christopher John Ball and commented:
There is nothing more I can add to this piece on Iain Duncan Smith. Mike is correct ‘There is now only one option available. It’s time he (Iain Duncan Smith) got the boot.’ Please read Mike’s article and distribute it.

Thanks for replying. I of course would not condone it or not look for others too. Yes, there has been too much death already. The point is that he is such a stain on humanity that some very nice people would not feel nearly as bad as they would for other deaths, and others would be pleased.

It’s the level of frustration people harbour Mike, as you know : That corrupt psychopathic liars get clean away with it.

His is a very safe seat of course.

So what are procedural ways forward on this in your estimation?

If there are none with good prospects it underlines in my opinion that this is an illegitimate government which we have a duty to remove via mass civil disobedience, at the earliest opportunity. There’s no need for anyone to be shot, but they must go. It’s a matter of national dignity.

So it is up to people of good faith to get right in their way and make their lives extremely difficult. Who was it, who said that evil things happen because good people stand by and do nothing? That was a very wise person.

IDS should be talking to the committee at least once a month so that those that have died who are going through the welfare reform process get a chance to question him on how these people have died and in what circumstances

as you can see from this PDF the death list is very high and contains many people whose relatives are left wonting answers in to how there family member has died

I put in a Freedom of Information request for the current figures 12 days ago or thereabouts. The DWP has a little over a week left in which to reply. After that, it’s a complaint to the Information Commissioner.

thank you mike
i myself have been collecting the names of people who have died for the pass 3 years and warned Gordon brown 5 years ago that he set up the welfare reform process wrongly and he agreed with me that my plan was far better albeit more time consuming

(all benefit claimants to be assessed at their home only with their partner present and carer if applicable along with a qualified doctor from ATOS and a person from the DWP to make sure that all payments were and are correct and all security checks are in place for any fraud)

My conservative mp still thinks my plan is watertight and prevents any undue stress on the claimant

Reblogged this on The SKWAWKBOX Blog and commented:
I’ve been anticipating this meeting for weeks, now the slimy, spawny git just oozes out of it and sends lackeys instead. ‘Coward’ is one word for Smith. To me he’s Wormtongue, dripping poison in ears to corrupt and mislead, but without the balls to be a man and stand up to account for himself. A spineless, vicious eunuch, a snake that gives vipers a bad name.
Work and Pensions Select Committee members, if you happen to be reading this, send someone to clap him in irons and drag his smarmy, snivelling arse in front of you to answer for his lie.
Can you tell I’m not happy?

The wheels have been in motion, for quite some time, to achieve this. But it’s a convoluted process as the organisations concerned are understandably reluctant to interfere in the workings of a sovereign state. Abuses of power have to be proved before they’ll step in.

Surely a parliamentary committee can compel anyone – especially a cabinet minister – to come before them and give evidence? I am very disappointed by this news, not just because of the missed chance to see IDS squirm, but also because of the chance to expose the culture of lies and propaganda at the DWP.

IDS maintains he’s helping people find work ? and that is hie point in which he stands by. A few deaths here and there with the welfare reform and bedroom tax in his mind is normal and he needs to be stopped but how ?

He does maintain that, but are there ANY figures to support that? I don’t mean figures which show ‘people booted off benefits via sanctions’ or ‘people in workfare who are still unemployed and receiving benefits even though they pretend they aren’t’… I would honestly love to know a) what the actual level on unemployment is – the definition of ‘unemployment’ being ‘people who want a job but don’t have one’… and b) how this has varied over time, with a breakdown of how many of that number also fall into the disability category. I imagine that’s far too difficult for the government to measure. (I could help them… when I had a career, I used to tell companies they needed to measure what was useful, not what was easy to measure, and then help them to find a way… ;))

How to deal with him? Obviously I won’t suggest assassinating him-even though lots would cheer if that happened to him. Voting him out does not seem possible and we don’t have enough people for massive demos as he’s demonized us.

You have forgotten to mention that this man is also a thoroughly dishonest embezzler of public funds. Back in 2003 he created a totally false position for his wife to act as his paid secretary. Very reliable witnesses, including his constituency agent, stated that she did no work whatever and in fact the job didn’t exist. Nevertheless Duncan-Smith claimed additional parliamentary expenses to cover his wife’s “salary”. This was before the main expenses scandal and it was quietly swept under the carpet – a disgrace in itself. He should have been investigated by the Fraud Squad and put before the Courts.

Duncan Smith was educated at what is now St. Peter’s RC Secondary School, Solihull until the age of 14,[5] then at HMS Conway, a merchant navy training school on the Isle of Anglesey (where he allegedly played rugby union in the position of fly-half alongside Clive Woodward at centre) until he was 18.

His claim that he studied at the University of Perugia (founded 1308) was later found to be false after an investigation by the BBC.[6] His office subsequently admitted that he attended the Italian Università per Stranieri (founded 1921) in Perugia for a year but he did not obtain any qualifications or finish his exams.[6] In 1975 he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was subsequently commissioned into the Scots Guards.[7] Duncan-Smith’s biography, on the Conservative Party website, claimed he was “educated at Dunchurch College of Management” but following questioning by the BBC his office confirmed that he did not get any qualifications there either, stating that he completed six separate courses lasting a few days each, adding up to about a month in total.[6] Dunchurch was the former staff college for GEC Marconi, for whom Duncan-Smith worked in the 1980s.[6]

Problems as leader[edit]

In 2002, Michael Crick on the TV programme Newsnight caused some embarrassment when probing Duncan Smith’s curriculum vitae, which had been in circulation for years, for example, being reproduced in the authoritative annual Dod’s Parliamentary Companion for the previous ten years. The CV claimed that he had attended the University of Perugia when he had in fact attended the Università per Stranieri, which did not grant any degrees at that time, and a claim that he had attended the prestigious-sounding Dunchurch College of Management turned out to refer to some weekend courses at GEC Marconi’s staff college.[15][16]

Duncan Smith proved not to be a particularly effective public speaker in the rowdy atmosphere of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons. His seeming troubles with a “frog in his throat” throughout most of his two years as leader prompted Private Eye to refer to him incessantly as “Iain Duncan Cough”. As well as this, there were continued rumours of discontent among his backbenchers, not dampened by his warning to his party in November 2002: “My message is simple and stark, unite or die”.

The 2002 Conservative Party conference saw an attempt to turn Duncan Smith’s lack of charisma into a positive attribute, with his much-quoted line, “do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man”. The line was as much derided as it was admired. During PMQs, Labour backbenchers would raise their fingers to their lips and say “shush” when he was speaking. The following year, Duncan Smith’s conference speech appeared to have abandoned this technique in favour of an aggressive hard-man approach that few found convincing, even if the party members in the hall punctuated the speech with several ovations. The most remembered sound bite from the speech was his, “the quiet man is here to stay, and he’s turning up the volume.”

Duncan Smith stated in December 2002 that he intended to be party leader for a “very long time to come.” This did little to quell the speculation in Westminster regarding his future. On 21 February 2003, The Independent newspaper published a story saying that a number of MPs were attempting to start the process of petitioning for a vote of no confidence in Duncan Smith, as many Conservative MPs considered him to be unelectable.

These worries came to a head in October 2003. Michael Crick revealed that he had compiled embarrassing evidence, this time of dubious salary claims Duncan Smith made on behalf of his wife that were paid out of the public purse from September 2001 to December 2002. The ensuing scandal, known as “Betsygate” weakened his already tenuous position.[17]

Remember this is the quy whom changed the law…so he get away again. And save his #############. You put in the missing words …prediction of. He stand up in parliament and say.” The qoutes I received are a true figure from the statistic office, I may of miss read the figures with no intentions of decite.”..then its a big party at the restaurant with the bill going to the tax payer…..in reality. He should be out on his ear

Thank you Mike. There was a fat cat on The Sunday Politics just now repeating the lies about the number of people who stopped claiming incapacity benefits. He wasn’t challenged of course. Somehow we have to get the message out that this government – and opposition – are all lying as they dismantle the welfare state and destroy the NHS. Their propaganda machine, including the BBC as well as most of the printed press, is superb and very powerful, whereas the true opposition – us – don’t have a popular mouthpiece. So well done for your efforts to get the truth out there.

Since Cmeron and his lackeys have effectively declared War on the people of Britain, perhaps they should be arraigned before theWar Crimes Tribunal at theHague – I’d love to see them all in the Dock alongside Tony Bliar

We the undersigned charge Ian Duncan Smith with contempt of parliament, conspiricy to murder, crimes against humanity, slavery and countless human rights violations and have absolutely no confidence in him as he has abused his position to declare war on the people”

Just come across this
The Egyptian Army had to intervene to remove President Mohammed Morsi or face “chaos” amid protests by millions, former PM Tony Blair has said.
He told the Observer no UK government would have survived such an “awesome manifestation of people power”.

He told the Observer no UK government would have survived such an “awesome manifestation of people power.

Now that little bit brings a flutter to the old heart. Although Bliar ignored, what was it 2.000.000 against the war. If the unemployed and low paid alone were to march on Westminster London would be at a standstill for a month.

David Cameron misled the people to get into power and our democracy is floored
he should have been removed as in Egypt for misleading the people so Egypt is correct in it’s procedure
you can not have a democracy by someone getting into power by deception and it’s as simple as that that person needs to be removed to have the trust placed back into the system

with a floored democracy like most countries the people will always be the loser
clegg and Cameron are as bad as each other had they been born back in the fifties
and going around talking a load of tosh and being deceptive was a sure way you were going get killed where i grew up

Have you finished being quiet Duncan Smith
Cos you’re going to start a riot Duncan Smith
Have you finished selling rifles
And enjoying sherry trifles
Playing games with people’s life’s O Duncan Smith.

You make people suicidal, Duncan Smith.
And your lies make voters bridle, Duncan Smith.
Moral highground we deplore it
Face the facts and don’t ignore it
Nasty Tory, we deplore it, Duncan Smith.

You’re too smug to feel pathos, Duncan Smith.
You stand hand in glove with ATOS, Duncan Smith.
Duncan Smith you dare’nt come off it
You and Dave must make your profit
Plebs stay plebs but toffs should toff it, Duncan Smith.

Have you rented out your daughter, Duncan Smith?
Don’t you truly think you oughta, Duncan Smith?
You weren’t fit to lead your party
You’ve the morals or a smartie,
But you’re ripe for public slaughter, Duncan Smith.

Politicians, they claim to serve the public, a snow covered lie.
Involuntary holes in the wall they perceive both you and I.

Protecting their public with their glass hammer, then they deny their deeds lacking a guilt ridden stammer.
self serving liars without conscience or shame, then they point the finger accusing the least to blame.
They splurge the taxpayers money to line their own pockets, on their champaign lunches and expensive rockets.

Meanwhile the country spirals deeper in debt, our taxes are stolen; and so many have wept.
British industry: spread out and staked.. Stretched spread eagled for other nations to take.

nothing left for us except bulging population, no paid jobs left in this once worthy nation.
Influx of immigrants mixing with the masses. Into bulging Britain, they have free passes.

Thousands of new structures to house the growing crowds, but no new jobs for those once proud.
Unemployment numbers increases in spades, Peoples’ jobs stolen and filled with modern slaves.

Workfare so illegal, violating human rights, empathic unemployed comprehending black slaves plights.
Endless propaganda spread by the right wing news, Unemployed are the victims; they are the modern Jews.

“scroungers and workshy”: The most ignorant call; the hollow lies from the greatest thieves of all.
Goodbye dear Britain, from all your former friends. Liars and thieves have wrought your sad and shameful end.

This man is one of the heartless UK politicains I have ever known. He is bringing so much distress to 1000’s of vulnerable people in this country with his nasty little bedroom tax, new ESA and JSA rules. In my opinion this man is not only a bully but a cowardly rat too.